How Does EHR Improve Patient Engagement

EHR software can offer medical practices and organizations a ton of features and benefits that help improve their operation's efficiency, boost their profit, revenue, and, more importantly, patient engagement. How does it do that, you wonder? Let us break it down for you.

Most EHR software nowadays packs features and solutions like telehealth and a patient portal. These solutions have proven to drastically improve patient engagement with their health care providers.

Before we go on about how EHR improves patient engagement, allow us to explain what telehealth and patient portal are exactly.
 

What Is Telehealth?

Telehealth is a technological solution that allows patients to access healthcare services remotely. It is integrated into most EHR software. With Telehealth, care providers can offer virtual appointments to their patients through video meetings. It is more than that though; as telehealth is integrated with EHR software, clinicians and doctors can simultaneously take notes during a telehealth visit and have immediate access to their patient's records, which will be automatically updated and synced with them.
 

What Is the Patients' Portal?

The patients portal is a cloud-based interface that patients can use to log into their healthcare providers' EHR software, where they get to perform several functions such as:

• Schedule appointments
• Access their medical records
• Receive their test results
• Access virtual appointments/visits
• Pay their medical bills
• Receive their drug prescriptions
   

How Does EHR Improve Patient Engagement?

If it is not clear by now, these two solutions work hand in hand to improve patient engagement. Telehealth provides remote medical care access for patients in rural areas through the patients' portal, and it keeps them more connected to their care providers.

Physical appointments are no longer a necessity, as not only patients can do a doctor's visit remotely, but they also have immediate access to their expertise from anywhere. Additionally, as we mentioned earlier, patients can use the patient portal to pay their medical bills, receive their drug prescriptions, and also have their insurance eligibility validated through the EHR software.
 

Best EHR Software Recommendations

1. AdvancedMD

AdvancedMD is our top pick for one of the best EHR software in the market. It has over 22 years of experience in providing top-notch medical solutions for practices of any kind and size. With AdvancedMD, you get the following EHR features:

• Medical billing software
• Electronic health records
• Scheduling software
• Smart dashboards
• Patient charts
• Patient portal
• Telehealth
• Electronic prescriptions

AdvancedMD does not advertise any plans or prices for its EHR system, it will rather offer you a customized quote depending on your practice size, type, and needs. To get your quote, you need only reach out to their team by phone or email at (801) 984-9500 and [email protected].

2. SAP HealthCare

SAP Healthcare is our second best EHR software recommendation. SAP is a giant B2B and B2C solution provider that offers the most comprehensive set of services and unmatched technology. Its main features and offerings are the following:

• Patient administration and billing
• Health business intelligence
• Health data integration
• Patient portal
• Drug safety and compliance
• Electronic prescriptions

SAP does not offer any defined plans and prices for its EHR and healthcare solutions, it will rather devise your practice a unique price depending on its size and needs. You can easily reach their team to get your quote by phone at 1-800-872-1727.

3. Salesforce Health Cloud

For our last pick, we chose Salesforce Health Cloud. Salesforce offers the best CRM software in the industry and customizes its solutions to every industry's needs. As for its Health Cloud, it is professionally designed to provide healthcare organizations and practices with all the tools and solutions they need to make their operations run more efficiently.

• Electronic medical records
• Artificial intelligence
• Custom care plan and management
• Customized patient experience
• Workflow automation
• Medical and insurance data models

Salesforce offers two plans for its health cloud software:

• Enterprise plan: starting at $300 per month per user, billed annually
• Unlimited plan: starting at $450 per month per user, billed annually

You can also read more about its CRM software here in our full Salesforce CRM review.

Salesforce also offers a 30-day free trial to try out its health cloud solution.